Introduction

After years of hard work your business has reached the next level. Your website is up and running, you are acquiring new customers, scaling new heights and life could not be better. All is great now, but can you guarantee the same six months down the line? While signing up new customers is always exciting, it is maintaining your existing customer base which is the toughest part of the business. Can you confidently say that you are doing enough to retain your customers? No you do not have to call them every month to see if they have some business for you. All it needs is a simple email.

Yes, believe it or not, but a simple email can do your business well that a personal visit may not. An email can not only help you get new business but also serve as a reminder to your old customers who will come back to you when they have worked. It all depends on how good is your email marketing technique is. And today we will compare the best in the business of email marketing, GetResponse and Constant Contact to help you decide how you should use your emails. Both these tools will help you build up and maintain a subscriber list that you contact from time to time to generate leads and prosper your business. Let us know see how they fare, head to head.

Account Setup

To begin with, you will have to sign up for either of the services, where you will have to setup an account for yourself that will be your command center to handle your email marketing. While we did this, we found that GetResponse has a simpler process to create your account and quickly import your contacts list during the setup process itself. Constant Contact on the other hand seemed a little slow to respond and sometimes even stopped abruptly while importing contacts. Once set, however, Constant Contact has a very sleek way of saving your contacts, as if they were part of your smartphone and can be worked with easily even on mobile devices, no matter how big the list was.

What’s On Offer?

While the whole purpose of email marketing is to keep your customers updated on your directory of products or services and probably even let them know what is currently on offer, in this modern day and age of mobile devices and quirky webpages, you need to add an extra little to your email marketing methods to get a little ahead of the competition. GetResponse offers you an innovative landing page creator tool that allows you to create some of the best landing pages that we have seen in the market till date.

You can either choose to make a new one on your own or improvise on the many templates available in the database to create the perfect landing page for your customers. On the other hand, Constant Contact lets you keep a tab on how much you are actually spending on your email marketing. Through ‘trackable coupons’ you get to know exactly how much return you are getting on your investment.

While GetResponse is very likeable in terms of how the site looks, feels, is laid out, has multiple features, etc., you will also be happy to know that it is also friendly on the pocket. The amount ConstantContact charges you for using their autoresponder, GetResponse gives you an entire months service that includes designing your webforms, sending our surveys and even shout out on social media. Using social media plugins on Constant Contact would cost you at least $60 a month for a base of 500 subscribers.

Both these services let you sign up for a free trial to get an idea of what email marketing is going to be while to sum up, it is not a difficult choice to make, if you are looking for an email marketing service that gives you a host of features but does not pinch your pocket, then GetResponse will be the preferred choice for you.

Features

Overall, when you do compare GetResponse with Constant Contact, you are drawn to the host of features that GetResponse offers. Not only can you design responsive emails that too using a drag and drop editor, you get the advantage of Email Intelligence feature that helps you gauge the response to your newsletter. Additionally the Inbox Preview feature will lets you a take a sneak peek at how your email will look in the recipients inbox, depending on the service they use (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo etc.) so that you can adjust all the elements perfectly before hitting the Send button.

The advanced technology that GetResponse utilizes is clearly the reason behind easy to use website and smooth functioning of its tools. It also helps users, whether experienced or new to take full advantage of the site’s functionality. Users can simply choose from 500+ professionally designed templates to get started and even try out the A/B testing on their subscribers when they desire. While the Learning Center, can take you from 0-10,000 subscribers in 90 days or less, advanced users can even segment their subscribers to increase targeting efficiencies and thereby revenue.

Pricing and Conclusion

GetResponse comes with a pricing plan (starts with as low as $15 for 1,000 subscribers) that accommodates all kinds of users. So, if you are just starting off, you can pick a basic plan and increase your subscription as and when your number of subscribers pick up. For annually billed subscriptions, you can also enjoy 18% discount and you can cancel your subscription at any time you like. To conclude, GetResponse just wins this comparison hands down thanks to its superior technology, abundant features, smooth functionality and a smart pricing plan, all designed keep the end user in mind.

About I2Mag

I2Mag, an Internet & Design Inspiration Magazine having emphasis on empowering and inspiring people by spreading the waves of knowledge. I2Mag is an independent news source dedicated to covering start-ups, reviewing internet products, social media, digital culture and technology news.